Rockford's new ward map developed with little political warfare

Friday

Dec 16, 2011 at 12:01 AMDec 16, 2011 at 3:04 PM

ROCKFORD — Aldermen are ready to put the final touches on their effort to split the city into 14 equal parts, and unlike other government bodies, the process has been fairly smooth and without controversy.

Corina Curry

ROCKFORD — Aldermen are ready to put the final touches on their effort to split the city into 14 equal parts, and unlike other government bodies, the process has been fairly smooth and without controversy.

Unlike national and state maps that have been battled in court and unlike their counterparts across the river who increased districts, reduced board members and increased pay, Rockford leaders aren’t anticipating any troubles with the new wards, and they aren’t changing much either.

Rockford’s population came in at about 152,500 in 2010, said Jonah Katz, a long-range planner with the city who has been working with aldermen on the new map. The target number for each new ward was about 10,900 people.

In Rockford’s case most of the boundary changes can be seen in the city’s center, Katz said, where some landlocked wards lost population and had to spread into another ward’s territory to add constituents.

The other place people will see movement in the map is on the east and northeast where areas are getting smaller because the population is growing.

Ald. Lenny Jacobson, D-6, headed up the redistricting committee. He and Katz have gone through seven versions of maps, he said. They think they have a winner in the latest version and are getting ready to present it for a vote in mid-January.

While the process often ends up mired in politics and power brokering, in the end, Jacobson said, it’s about democracy.

“So everybody has an equal opportunity to choose the people who will represent them,” he said.

Jacobson said he and other aldermen have paid close attention to minority populations and making sure to keep them intact, something the state requires, he said, and worked closely with the Rockford Board of Elections to make sure the lines they were drawing worked well with congressional and state lines.

Coordination between a municipality and an election authority can make a big difference when officials sit down and start slicing up a city.

Ken Harper, Rockford’s new Board of Elections executive director, said election authorities have the next step of drawing precincts that tend to be about 800 registered voters.

When city lines align as much as possible with state and national lines, precincts can be cut easier, polling places stay put, and there’s less confusion for voters, Harper said.

“The city and county both did a really good job this year,” he said. “We were able to give feedback in both cases. ... I think it’s going to make our job easier next summer.”